Building a Community of Interpreters: Readers and Hearers as Interpreters

by Walter R. Dickhaut

The continually growing appeal of the notion of a minister/priest as one more professional person-with-the-answers lends itself more to certainty than to mystery. There are few things ...

Absence is not an enemy; absence is a mystery, so both absence and mystery may even become forms of presence.

Need to explore

James Hillman asserts that “Absence takes precedence over presence, or better said, absence is the first form of presence.”

Mystery flourishes amidst the questions prompted by emptiness and absence.

In so many of our liturgical assemblies, much of what we do is intent on ignoring or overcoming the human-divine features of mystery.

The mystery of divine presence is not enhanced by looking at the back of your neighbor’s head but by seeing your neighbor’s face.

A contemporary space for worship should recognize that whatever holiness is present in the liturgical practice of a congregation is essentially the holiness of a human community.

words are only one of the languages we know and use, even though we tend to value our words more than the other languages we employ.

Words make up a language that points to hidden surprises that arrest us. At the same time, our concentration on words as the chief means of communication, and our consistent propensity to overvalue them to the exclusion of other languages, may be as much an escape from an emptiness with far more potentiality than we realize.

8 “A Mysterious Voice Makes a Strange Sound”

9 Arrested by Surprise

“. . . Surprise Is a Name of God.”

Surprise has an eschatological dimension; it is an interruption of our mundane routines by the intrusion of another reality.

If the gospel of Jesus Christ is anything, it is surprise. In the stories, parables, and sayings of and about Jesus, surprise is ubiquitous, even though this literature has become so familiar to us that we take the particulars for granted.

The trouble with the stories of and about Jesus is that institutional interests have neutered them until they have lost their power to surprise, at least in many instances.

If the story doesn’t surprise, it is worth wondering how carefully we are really listening.

The practice of hope is the practice of remaining open to surprise

Often, it seems, when we turn to Scripture or other written texts, we assume that the only meaning that exists is the meaning that abides in the text, and if we can just listen diligently enough, position ourselves in right relation to the text, it will surrender its meaning and we will be able to get a lesson or insight (or sermon) from it. If I squeeze a text hard enough, it will reward me with a treasure. But that’s not my experience. My experience is that texts are texts of memory (memory of ancient meanings) for particular communities of faith, at particular times in history, in particular sociopolitical contexts. A particular memory preserves meaning for particular times, places, and contexts—not necessarily the same for all times, places, and contexts. This is why there is, in the academic world, a history of interpretation.

Important. This is the premise of the entire book.

When the listener-interpreter brings imaginative engagement to the listening, the stage is set for the discovery and assignment of new meaning.

In the case of a text of Scripture, meaning advances in the form of memory and is further advanced by the listener or the reader in the fire of imagination and the formation of new meanings and new images. It follows, then, that when given permission, the teachings and parables of Jesus are potentially and universally surprising to us, and always so. Ironically (and surprisingly), one of the primary reasons we return to these writings time and again is that they intend to surprise us; they exist for that purpose.

10 Surprise Amidst Darkness

11 Pervasive Expectation

We come now to expectation, the hub to which the entire biblical saga is joined.

expectation, like mystery and surprise, is a theological category, at least within the tradition of the Christian church. Christians are not a people of mere artifacts and ancient fascinations; they are a people of the future, a people of possibility, a people who expect to be changed and to make change.

It’s interesting to discuss what Jesus said and did or what Paul thought and wrote, but the bottom line has to do with decisions that confront us and choices we must make. Were it not for these decisions and choices that come from what lies ahead, albeit unseen, there would be little real need or desire to study Scripture;

Expectation and imagination are like siblings. If there is no expectation, there is no work for imagination. If there is no imagination, there is no expectation.

Expectation is about other worlds, about possibility and potential. Were we not dissatisfied with aspects of the world(s) we inhabit, we would not be expectant; we would not care about or otherwise be interested in possibility and potential.

Expectation is the interruption of the mundane, the rupture of that to which we fear we must be resigned, the intrusion of a new possibility, an invitation to the future. Expectation is, finally, bestirred by the intervention of nameless forces that come upon us uninvited and unannounced—i.e., by surprise—with multiform consequences.

12 “A Persistent Inkling”

13 “On the Road Again”

Readers and hearers constitute a community formed by words; we use words to create worlds in our imaginations.

Words, and the pictures they create, are the tools of the interpreter; they are the materials of which we make meaning.

14 One, Two, Three Implications

“So What?”

Are there any words or acts that are self-interpreting, thereby making it unnecessary to wonder whether the words of any text, whether written or spoken, sacred or not, can be interpreted not merely in two ways but in multiple ways?

Several implications worth considering come to mind.

First,

interpretation is not solely the work of the so-called experts, the scholars of the academy or the professional-in-residence. Everyone who is engaged in reading or hearing porti...

So interpretation is the work of a community (whether or not the community is aware of it). It is the work of all of us who read, hear, and study common texts.

second

different interpretative moves inevitably reveal distinct patterns and methods of interpretation, the consequence of which is that common interpretive methods tend to produc...

Third,

our interpreting is not solely the work of individuals-in-isolation but also the practice of hermeneuts-in-community introduces avenues of mutual accountability and enrichment to our respective and competing methods.

the reader or hearer is to take responsibility for her and his interpretive work, then the “So what?” question must be addressed to not only the author or speaker; it must be put to the reader or hearer as well. If interpretive work is a production of meaning by either individual or community, then it is the interpreters who will shape what difference it makes to interpret this way or that, to settle on this meaning or another.

Afterword

So to extend the metaphor to the practice of preaching and the biblical interpretation that preaching requires, I am lobbying for homiletical work that reaches beyond the text’s originating context (one might say, ancient context) to a setting or circumstance in the modern world, a context for which the text was not intended but one that may be reachable without distorting its context of origin.

The remainder of the afterword is an effort to sketch out a pathway that leads from this book to your community—a plan, if you will—designed to become a means of introducing the salient features of the book into the day-to-day life of a living congregation.